Many people find networking events awkward and approach with them with a sinking heart. Unfortunately they refuse to go away with many companies insisting that their staff network with clients. My experience is that what you often see at such events is large clusters of staff talking to each other and clients left to fend for themselves.
Conferences are another trial. There seem to be groups of people that know each other really well – usually the organizing committee – and then odd pairs of colleagues and a pack of lone wolfs.